Chapter 13 #2
I hummed around him, the vibration pulling another groan from deep in his chest. God, I loved this.
Loved the way his thighs trembled under my palms when I braced them there.
Loved the broken little sounds he couldn’t hold back anymore—the sharp inhale when I swirled my tongue just under the head, the helpless grunt when I sped up, sucking harder, wet and messy and loud.
Every second of it burned itself into my brain: the weight of him on my tongue, the salty leak of precum I swallowed greedily, the way his abs clenched under the rumpled hem of his shirt when I looked up and met his eyes.
He was watching me. Pupils blown wide, mouth parted, that perfect professional mask completely shattered. Sweat dotted his temple. His chest heaved like he’d just finished a suicide drill.
I wanted to remember every single detail.
I pulled off with a wet pop, strings of spit connecting my lips to his cock, and stroked him fast with my hand while I caught my breath.
“You’re loud,” I said, voice hoarse, grinning like an idiot because I couldn’t stop. “Never thought I’d hear the Ice Doc curse like that.”
His laugh came out shaky, half a groan. “Keep going and you’ll hear a lot more.”
Challenge fucking accepted.
I dove back down, taking him deep again, setting a rhythm that had his hips stuttering forward. One of my hands slid between his legs, cupping his balls, rolling them gently while I worked him with my mouth.
He cursed again—low, filthy, “Jesus Christ, Wesley, your fucking mouth”—and the words sent heat rushing straight to my groin.
I was so hard it hurt, but I didn’t care. This was about him. About cracking open every layer of Nathan Cross until all that was left was the man making these sounds for me.
I sucked harder, faster, tongue pressing flat, throat working around him every time I took him deep. His groans turned into broken pants, the hand in my hair trembling now.
“Wesley—I’m—fuck, I’m close—”
I didn’t pull off. I wanted it. Wanted to taste him, feel him lose it completely because of me. I moaned around his cock, encouraging, and that was it.
His whole body went tight. A guttural sound tore out of him—half my name, half a curse—and then he was coming, hot pulses across my tongue. I swallowed every drop, working him through it with slow, gentle sucks until he shuddered and sagged back against the wall, breathing like he’d run ten miles.
I eased off slowly, pressing one last kiss to the sensitive head before tucking him back into his boxers with careful hands. My knees ached, my jaw was sore, and my own dick was still straining against my pants, but none of it mattered.
I looked up at him, flushed, wrecked, blue eyes soft in a way I’d never seen, and felt something huge and terrifying and perfect settle in my chest.
Nathan’s hand slid from my hair to my cheek, thumb brushing my swollen bottom lip.
“Wesley,” he said again, quieter this time.
I smiled, still buzzing with the taste of him and the echo of every sound he’d made.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
I sat back on my heels and looked up at him.
Cross was leaning against the wall, and he was looking at the middle distance of the room, breathing evening out, and I felt good. I felt warm and rearranged and like something that had been pulled tight for months had finally let go.
"I’m good at that, huh?" I asked.
Silence.
Not the comfortable kind.
Cross’s blue eyes met mine.
Something had changed. Something settling over his expression like a door closing in a room you thought you were welcome in.
He looked at me kneeling on my own hardwood floor and something moved through his eyes that I couldn't name and didn't like the shape of.
"Nathan—"
"I should go," he said.
He pushed off the wall. Straightened his clothes with the automatic precision of a man reassembling himself.
Of course.
This wasn’t how Nathan Cross did things.
He was probably already regretting everything we’d just done. Cross looked like he was putting himself back together piece by piece, like none of this had happened. He’d shown up here to tell me off in the first place, and then I’d made it worse. He had a career, a reputation, rules.
I was the one who had screwed up things. Again.
"Like, this whole—" I moved my hand vaguely at the space between us, at the apartment, at the general situation. "We're adults. Nobody's reading into anything. It's not a big deal. It doesn’t have to mean anything."
Something shifted in his expression.
“Right,” he said. One word.
“It doesn’t have to be weird,” I added quickly. “Or complicated. I get it. We just—” I shrugged. “We had a moment. It doesn't have to be—we don't have to make this into a whole—"
"Wesley."
I stopped.
Cross was looking at me with that look. The one I still don't have language for.
"I understand," he said.
Two words this time. Each one completely level. The way he said everything, precise and final, like he was reporting a fact.
What the hell did he understand because I didn’t even understand what I’d just said? But something about the way he said it made me want to take back every word I'd said in the last thirty seconds, which I couldn't do.
With his shirt untucked he was the most disheveled I had ever seen Nathan Cross and I was blowing it in real time and I couldn't find the words, which had never once in my life been a problem I had. Words were the thing I always had. Words were the whole system.
The system had just used itself against me, and I didn't fully understand how yet.
"Get some sleep," he said. Not unkind. Something more tired than either of those things, something with more weight to it than the wall had ever had, which was worse somehow, which landed somewhere worse. "Drink water. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Nathan—"
He looked at me one more time.
That look. There was something in it that might have been—I don't know. I don't know what it was.
He nodded once. Walked to the door. Let himself out.
The door clicked shut.